He dragged the snake to Death's Door and got an extra-large wagon to help him transport it to Agate City. When he finally reached the beast-hunting center, he finally found out that the python was at the ninth transformation of the first mortal coil.
He thought to himself, "No wonder it was so difficult to kill."
The evaluation of the python's carcass took longer than that of the boars because it was bigger and because it had many valuable parts.
After it was examined, he was given a payment slip worth 60 gold coins and 100,000 hunting points. He could also exchange the payment slip for 770,000 hunting points.
So the python was seven times as valuable as the boars. He was satisfied with this evaluation. Then he went to exchange the payment slip for his reward.
This reward was able to push his nameplate from the second grade to the third grade. It became completely yellow and began to change from yellow to orange.
He was battered and bruised, but he walked out of the beast hunting center with a smile on his face.
He thought to himself, "Just 10,000,000 million hunting points next, and then I'll have to gather the price of the force diagram. I hope it isn't too much."
Even if the cost of the force diagram is expensive, he is willing to accept the cost because the beast hunting center is one of the few places, if not the only place, in Agate City where he can gain access to the force diagram without having to swear an oath of allegiance or fealty.
There are many places in Agate City where he can get a force diagram. They are all first-class dojos where they teach cultivation. But they will only give disciples that they trust access to the force diagram.
This trust isn't something that can be gained in a few years. In the case of Sky Claw, he earned his master's trust because he was adopted from a young age.
Even then, his master still had to watch him for nearly 20 years before he was trusted enough with the advanced version of the mana breathing technique.
Arthur is not willing to give up 20 years of his life to gain trust. The alternative is to swear an oath of allegiance.
Once he swears with the Ethera tree as a witness and is marked by its golden leaf, he can't break that promise or he will suffer excruciating pain as a warning. If he still refuses to honor the path, he will die.
On the other hand, all the beast-hunting center wants from him is hunting points and an oath not to share the force diagram with anyone or teach anyone after learning it.
He will take that offer over returning to his family, swearing an oath of fealty, and being given the force diagram for free. This is because even though the force diagram appears to be free, it isn't actually free. He is exchanging his freedom for it, which is something he can never accept.
Now that he is close to achieving his goal in the beast hunting center, he is in a good mood. It is a feeling that is opposite to what many of the people stalking him were feeling.
He and Ruff returned home to rest, have their bath, and eat. They didn't go hunting for three days after because he was repairing his armor.
It was four days after the incident with the python before he could return to hunting. Unfortunately, hunting was a failure that day.
He stayed in the green forest for four hours but didn't come across prey. He still had other things to do, such as paying attention to his wine distillery and exercising, so he returned home.
He returned the following day to hunt and was lucky to encounter prey. It was a saber-tooth tiger.
The saber-tooth tiger has canines that extend into bone knives. Its saber teeth are the main reason why it is an apex predator in green forests. Without the extended bone knives in its mouth, it would have difficulty killing boars.
Boars are ordinary predators. In the hierarchy of the food chain of the green forests, they are mid-level creatures. They are just one level above grazers and herbivores.
Despite being ordinary and common predators, they possess a strong defense and powerful means of attack that have enabled them to thrive in the green forest.
Their double combination of their tough hide and sharp tusks makes them difficult to deal with. If tigers don't have a means to kill them reliably, then they will stand no chance with the other predators in the forest.
As things are, without their saber teeth, tigers might not stand a chance with pure grazers like deer. But thanks to their saber teeth, not even Arthur's armor can save him if the tiger gets a good bite out of him.
Not only is the tiger's bite power strong, but its saber teeth also possess strong penetrating power. So he had to be wary of it.
The tiger is a predator that kills boars. It is more agile and much stronger than boars, but the peculiar thing was that the tiger was not much more difficult for him to kill than boars.
The fight was longer because both of them were dodging each other's attacks. But while the tiger needed to get very close to him to inflict damage on him, he didn't need to because he had a giant sword with a considerable range of attack.
He was able to dodge and create many cuts on the tiger's body. His attacks were not used with his full strength, but they managed to injure the tiger because it didn't have a tough hide.
On the rare occasion when the tiger managed to slap him with its giant paws, his armor managed to protect him from its claws. So he was able to use that opportunity to counterattack and injure the tiger.